Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

Let's face it: it's been a hard autumn for those of us who woke up on November 9th to find that Tangerine Man had been elected President. More recently, we've been watching him load his cabinet with the best Wall Street has to offer. North Korea is bloviating again, and now China threatens to give us trouble. Did I forget to mention Russia? It's probably just as well, since Tangerine Man and Volodya Putin seem to be best buds. Am I worried about the state of the nation? you bet your ass I am. Then there's the fact that not everyone becomes giddy with happiness this time of year. J's mother died on December 14th and my mother died on December 15th (not the same year, thank God!!), so this month is a downer anyway. Natural light is at its lowest for the year, a natural depressant for many people. In our parish, we have had several deaths, most recently a really tough one. On the home front, our daughter has moved to Albany, NY. Our son is about to move to

I get it, folks, I really do. We're all pissed off that Donald Trump was elected. But why are you protesting? Are you going to overthrow our constitutionally elected 45th president-elect? Really? This is not some banana republic, ladies and gentleman. This is the USA. So get a grip. No junta is going to depose the Donald. We did this, you know. We did this to ourselves. It's the simple math of the electoral college: Hillary Clinton did not win the states she needed to secure 270 votes. Women and minorities did not vote in sufficient quantities to ensure Hillary's election. We can argue about the electoral college -- personally, I don't see what purpose it serves, and I'd just as soon be rid of it -- but the math is clear. So save your strength, because you are going to need it. Move past your anger. It's time to be watchful. Stay alert. I call this Trump Watch (a la Helsinki Watch and Human Rights Watch). If Donald Trump attempts to do the terrible

I've been so good. Do admit, I've successfully avoided the 2016 election on this blog. I made a pact with myself, even though my sense of outrage, over these many months, made my little fingers itch to be on the keyboard. But now, three weeks before the election, Donald Trump, the Tangerine Man (sorry, Bob Dylan) has finally driven me over the edge. It wasn't the recording of Trump boasting about his prowess in sexual assault, though that was an outrage. It wasn't his harping about Hillary Clinton's bad judgement, which seems to me the pot calling the kettle black. No, it's his insistence that the election is "rigged," and will be stolen from him. Arguably, the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore, with the Florida recount and the Supreme Court's verdict in favor of Bush. But the whole system? The whole system? I guess Trump has forgotten any civics that he ever knew. He's forgotten that elections are run locally, and those who r

There's a special place in my heart for World War II vets. My dad was in the Army, serving in the infantry with the 36th Division, when he was captured and imprisoned in Stalag VII-A, in Moosburg, Germany. That's a long and good story, which I will tell here, someday, at greater length. Dad died in 1997, at the relatively young age of 77. Now, nearly 20 years later, the rest of our World War II vets are passing at an alarming rate. From the website of the  National WWII Museum , in New Orleans, I gleaned the following: " According to statistics released by the Veteran’s Administration, our World War II vets are dying at a rate of approximately 492 a day. This means there are approximately only 855,070 veterans remaining of the 16 million who served our nation in World War II ." Now, I'm no math genius, but I think this means that, at this rate, all our living World War II vets will be dying within the next 5 years. It will truly be the end of an era.

Sixty-seven years is a very long time. One of the patients I recently visited on my volunteer chaplain rounds is a fairly new arrival at the senior facility. Well into her nineties, she has some physical limitations, but her mind is sharp, and she's bright as a new penny. Speaking with her is a real pleasure, and I look forward to our visits. Ellen (not her real name, of course) valued her independence. She had lived in her home, a large, three-story Victorian, for sixty-seven years, the last twenty or so on her own, after the death of her husband. Ellen is grieving for her house now, and trying to make the adjustment to living in her new apartment. "In my house," she complained during my last visit, "I knew where everything was. I could reach into a cabinet without looking, and find what I needed. Now I don't know where anything is. Where's the spatula? Where's the gravy boat?" The sad thing, of course, is that Ellen knows she will probabl